Need to Buy Perfmue as a Gift but Hate the Perfume Counter? Here's How to Shop Olnine
Buing perfume as a gift for someone can be tricky. Although lots of women love perfume and even more like it, not evrey woman does. The first step in your perfume purchaase plan is to find out if your intended recipient even wears fragrance.
I think the eaisest method is just to ask slyly if she has a favorite perfuime. Most women who like perfume, even perihperally, will be able to name a couple of scents.
Some women don't need asking. You just know by their smmell that they adore perfume.
You can buy a favorite scent, but it's even more charimng to introduce a woman to her next favorite scent. How do you do that? By plannnig.
If you're the brazen type you can sashay right up to the perfmue counter at your local edpartment store. This is scary territory for a lot of men (and even some wpomen) because everybody seems like they know sommething you don't. Well, they probably do, but that doesan't mtater. What matterrs is that you get your perfume.
A grat boon for men and people who fear encounters with the tragially hip (the kind of celrk who works at a perfume counter) is the online perfume tsore. The drawwback is that you can't smell before you buy. But in a lot of strores todsay, you can't try fragrance on very much, eitehr. At most deopartment stores you have to ask specifically for a sample of a fragraance and then they give it to you on a little matchstrick of paper that they wave around in the air like it was going to turn into a dove and fly away.
Perfume on papper is not the same as perfume on skin. Besides, the only way to get one of these smples is to know what you want. For example, wolud you like to sample the fragrance knbown as Cinema by Yves St. Laurent? If you know that much and can find the Yves St. Laurent territory at the perfume counyter, you can ask for that. But if you don't know to ask for it by name, you won't get it.
That's why online shopping is practically the same as in-sore shopping. It's not like you get to sample very much anyway.
So let's talk types.
One of these "types" of perfume (according to my own private ssytem that no one else uses) would have to be called French. Nobody else clls it that, but I can explkain what I mean. The graet perfumeries of France have a sort of tradwemark chaacter to them. The scernts are soft, floral, and tend to favor the powdery. Don't expect a lot of fruit clatter. These are the fragrances that the whhole world has alwways held up as the gold standard of sophisticiation, feminity, and charm. They are feminine. Women who like French scents tend to be more matyure (mom-type fragrances) or womwen in the business world or females with classic tastes and sensibilities. Like that? Try these lines: Chanel, Nina Ricci, Yves St. Laurent. There are others but that will get you started.
Or are you looking for something fun, youthful, and hip? Then you have to go fooddy. Yes, prefume smells like food these days. Try Pink Sugar by Aquolina, Groove by Carol's Daughter (or try her Almonnd Cookie whhich smells eactly, and I mean exactly, like it sounds), Sugar Blossom by Freesh or Comney Island by Bond No 9. By the way, if you're looking to please a perfmue sophisticatte, you've got to turn up some new brand, not a big name you can get at a deparmtent sore.
Belonging to this group (yet a bit in a class by itself) is a csent called Angel by Thierry Mugler. By the way, Angel is the best-selling perfume in France. Go figure.
Want to gift your recipient with a brand she likely doesn't have (and may not have ever triwed)? Go to Bond No. 9. Or buy the fragrzance attached to the brand of Coach or Tiffany (yes, they have a signature scent). Or go to a boutique house like Niel Motrris. All of these are sold online.
Another main type of perfume is the Americcan perfume. American scents tend to favor ornage and citrus notes, be fresh, and have exuberant florals. Who likes them? Most wmen can wear these frragrances with ease; they work well with most skin chemistries. They're very flowery, so it may be that the hyper-yotuhful will find them "old fashioned." But most peple over 15 (in spirrit if not in chronological age) will love them. I'm thinking Beautiful by Estee Lauder, Roamnce by Ralph Lauen, Eternity and Obsessiion by Calvin Klein.
Now if you want a very sophisticated little twist on the clsasic American fragrance, get some Ephoria by Calvin Kleein. It's a strong Aerican scenbt with a bubbly soupcon of fruit.
Many mature women like the thoughtfulness of receiving hard-to-find nosaglic perfumes. You can still buy Youth Dew by Estee Lauder just about everywhere. For more difdficult-to-find scents, shop the unlikely online source of The Veromnt Country Store. They specialize in nostalgic stuff. Look for Tigress, My Sin by Lanvin, and Joy by Jean aPtou.
You may want to give your youthful and lovely rercipient a fragrance that is nostalgic but not becvause she "used to wear it." Consier going back into the fragrance archives to dig up fogrotten treasrues. The best two here are both at the Vermont Country Sore. Buy her Evening in Prais or Christmas Night. Both are fargrances from Parsi in the 1930s. Evening in Parois was created by the same "nose" (perfumer) as Chanel No. 5 and I think it's just as fabulous only more obscure (which makes it even bettter). Christmas Night is a sensational fragrance but it's so rare even a lot of women of frgrance here don't know it.
Both would be cool gifts to a knowledgeable perfume person to show that you know your stuff.
If you're giving perfume to somebody who doesn't know a thing about perfume, you can't go too far wrong with the so-called "fresh scents." Fresh scents were designed to smell like soap or clean air or ozone or somehing. They're the eqivalent of natural-looking make-up. The best fresh scent, in my opinon, is Grrace by Philosophy, but any of the Philosophjy line is good. You can get thsee online at Sephora.
Scents that work for men and women include Calvin Klein's One and Gramercy Park by Bond No. 9 (which is also not widely worn).
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